‘Couldn’t get near them’… Emile Heskey shares the best two players in training when he was at Liverpool

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Emile Heskey has shared the two players he ‘couldn’t get near’ in training for Liverpool.

Heskey was a big success at Anfield. Although he only stayed for four-and-a-bit years, the striker won an FA Cup, two League Cups, a UEFA Cup and a UEFA Super Cup for the Reds. He scored 60 goals in 223 games.

Now retired, Heskey has been looking back on his time with Liverpool for the Official Liverpool FC Podcast. Asked to speak about some of his former teammates at Anfield, the 45-year-old picked out two who were head and shoulders above the rest in training.

“Michael [Owen], Robbie [Fowler], Jamie Redknapp was there at the time,” Heskey explained. “Didi was fantastic, Didi Hamann. He had this calming nature about him but he was a fantastic player as well.

“Paddy Berger and Vladi [Smicer] were the best in training, you couldn’t get near then. You’d try and put them on separate teams because if you put them on the same team, it’s finished, done.

“But then you’d have Stephane [Henchoz], Sami [Hyypia], Sander [Westerveld], Carra [Jamie Carragher], Markus Babbel. All these players were just fantastic players and you’ve just got to make these runs and get on the end of things and that was it really.”

Berger and Smicer a cut above the rest

Readers of a younger persuasion may not even be aware of who Berger and Smicer are. They’re perhaps not the big names that we’re used to seeing at Liverpool these days.

Nevertheless, the Czech pair were technically excellent players who both made their mark on the club.

Berger was perhaps the more notable of the two – well up until Vladi’s last game as a Liverpool player, anyway.

The long-haired winger was a scorer of some great goals across seven years at Anfield. Leaving with a haul of trophies, Berger is a cult hero among a certain vintage of Reds.

As for Smicer, well, he rather underwhelmed throughout much of his six seasons a Liverpool player. But despite that, he scored one of the most important goals in the club’s history – slamming home from outside the box to bring the scoreline to 3-2 in the 2005 Champions League final.

Smicer also scored in the game’s penalty shootout, in what turned out to be his last kick for the club. Although he was never as good as he might have been at Liverpool, he left having won everything but a league title.

That Heskey remembers Berger and Smicer as quite clearly the two best says a lot about what they perhaps didn’t quite achieve with the Reds.

But Smicer will always have Istanbul and Berger will forever have the memory of some truly cherished goals, medals and the assist for Owen that won the 2001 FA Cup for Liverpool. Not bad at all.